


to the rhythm we left behind

by mickleborger



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Kaer Morhen, POV Second Person, terrible haunted places are people too, the alluded-to massacre at Kaer Mohren specifically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 09:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14257710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mickleborger/pseuds/mickleborger
Summary: [twangs cello] what we see is man's cruelty





	to the rhythm we left behind

**Author's Note:**

> (Diablo Swing Orchestra, "Bedlam Sticks")

The river is poison. We do not drink from it.

The feeling of wrongness that begins in the overgrown forest is not the feeling of wrongness native to the forest, not the soft lilt of something just behind the shrubs that calls the traveler back from the mountains, back toward the beaten path.  The forest has grown to spit the wanderer back out none the wiser, though by what artifice no one knows.  It might have always been like this.  It might have been chosen because of this.

But it is not the crowding of the trees that feels wrong today, not the ghosts of long-ago screams that set your teeth on edge.  The quiet in the forest is too quiet today, and the mountain air is musty with the smell of iron and ash.  Something tells you to nudge your horse along.

There is a static in the distance between the snowy mountain caps on the horizon, touched by the slowly-shifting light of afternoon, soon to be snuffed out.  It does not buzz or ring but you look at the cliff faces and it feels like if you reached between them something would snap.  The shadows cast by the trees and stones scramble across the ground as if every evening they forget that nothing grows too long in this canyon too quick to fall into shadow.  You think this is a good thing, most of the time; but now the silence is heavy and your horse refuses to be pressed on, as if she also senses something not quite right, and though you have not had cause to fear the dark since you were a little boy with normal little boy eyes you feel something like a snake coiling in your belly and you find yourself wondering what the fuck god a half-remembered sibling used to pray to when the storm had passed and a tree branch felled in the middle of the night woke you both up and it was so dark and you knew so little and you were so scared and _shit_ the smell of ash and iron is stronger now and your horse knows the pass too well to hurry but she knows and you know and that iron smell is coming from entirely too much blood spilled on rocks and dirt and weeds and--

You take a breath.  And another, shaking.  This is the smell of old blood.  The storm is long passed.  You remember no names for any gods.  You are only the branch falling.

\---

The river is poison.  We cannot drink from it.

It is hard for one man to move many corpses, and not much easier for two.  A half-dozen of you may, but they are old and strewn about the grounds and their bones stick to the grass as stubbornly as their wraiths cling to the walls.  _It is better to leave them_ , someone says.  These walls cannot be rebuilt, or will not.  Better to leave other things to watch the ruins.

Dandelions have already started to grow around swords well-rusted, around shriveled shrunken hands trapped forever in useless armor.  Dandelions, and bright green grass, and little lilies-of-the-valley.  The smell is strange next to the smell of corpses.  This is not a sign of spring.

\---

The river is poison.  Only we can drink from it.

Bones litter the riverbed, staring with nettle eyes into the sky, whispering among themselves and quieting as you pass.  They are lodged between rocks and into crevices, pushed by the moat that floods when the rains come, crowned in algae and langoustines.  One of them sits upright, knocked over maybe by the waters but maybe as a bitter joke.  Its head tilts upward toward the bridge, and you try to avoid its gaze.  You do not remember who it used to be.  You cannot give it the name it asks for.  You think maybe you shouldn't.

Crows and ravens and other black birds with clever beaks have looted the fields, taken glittering metal and sticky bone up to their nests in the trees and rocks and watchtowers that belong to them now.  There are still broken hilts too heavy to fly off with in the woods, scorched boots stuck in cobbles too hard to pry anything out from, but in the hills now has come a sort of forgetfulness.  There are still things watching in the rubble, but they are in the rubble now.  Their bones like ashes have been scattered.

Nothing goes down into the moat, at least not to come back out again.  There the bones are bleached and weathered, and metal studs rusted to look like moss, but they are still there among the army of crustaceans that skitter out in the good season to grow fat and happy on the things that do not come back out of the moat, and the things that watch still watch from eye sockets that might have been theirs once.

You have lingered too long and the skeleton that sits upright against the wall of the keep still stares mournfully up at you.  You wonder if you have given it a name before and simply forgotten.


End file.
